


Non-compliant

by MistressPandora



Category: Outlander & Related Fandoms, Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Crack, Handcuffed Together, Language, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Our Heroes Are Terrible Patients, Sharing a Bed, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-08
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:07:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25138957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MistressPandora/pseuds/MistressPandora
Summary: Jamie and Lord John are stricken with whooping cough and Claire doesn't trust them to stay in bed when she's called away suddenly. Pitiful shenanigans ensue.
Relationships: Jamie Fraser/Lord John Grey
Comments: 26
Kudos: 73
Collections: Bad Things Happen Bingo, Outlander Bingo Challenge





	Non-compliant

**Author's Note:**

  * For [brownhairedlass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brownhairedlass/gifts).



> Special thanks to [MadamFraser](https://madamfraser.tumblr.com/) for the request (and patience as I tried to find a fun twist and got distracted by shiny new plot bunnies along the way)!
> 
> This story fills my Bad Things Happen Bingo square: **Hurts to Breathe**  
>  And my Outlander Bingo square: **Dropped the Handcuff Keys Behind the Bed**

“This is all your fault, you know.” 

Jamie Fraser craned his neck to scowl down at Lord John. They were both crammed into a narrow bed, and their proximity made the movement awkward. The manacles holding his left arm pinned to the headboard over his head didn’t help matters either. “I canna see how this is my fault.” Jamie turned away from Grey to cough into his right arm. It was a wretched, wet sound that burnt like fire in his lungs, and he could feel it rattling around in his chest. _Congestion_ , Claire had called it. 

As if the action were contagious, Grey coughed into the crook of his own arm, turning away from Jamie. His right hand was bound to the other side of the irons, arm wrenched high to be of a height with Jamie’s. He winced, flopping back against the pillow with a groan. 

“Claire kens I’m a model patient,” Jamie wheezed. “Ye’re the one who always insists on facing intruders by yerself when ye ken ye canna stand, much less fight.”

“That was one time,” Grey countered, hacking and sputtering. “And it was either that or let you come home to find your wife murdered and me dead of the measles. You, sir, are the one who tried to battle a buffalo when—” he stopped to cough and groan before finishing his thought. “When you were half dead of fever.” 

"Claire kens I would never ge’ out of bed an she told me not—" another painful fit had Jamie checking his shirt sleeve for blood. Claire said there wouldn’t be, but he couldn’t help looking anyway. "Not to."

John laughed and immediately wheezed, gasping for breath, sputtering and choking. “Christ,” he groaned. “You are a menace, Jamie Fraser. I can think of no one more insufferable when he’s incapacitated than you.” John coughed and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, his eyes squeezed shut in misery. 

“Aye—” Jamie stopped to cough. Jesus, it hurt. If only there was a way to stop breathing and not die of it. “Aye. Except fer yer’self. And now ye’re chained to me in this wretched cabin until Claire comes back.” It was a lot of words all at once, and Jamie took shallow breaths, trying desperately to fend off the inevitable coughing fit. He failed utterly, and when the hacking and retching yielded to a whooping gasp for breath, the fatigue washed over him, left him trembling. “Oh _God_ ,” he moaned. Everything, everly last muscle and bone in his body ached. “John. Do ye think ye could smother me with my pillow?”

“I know you’re joking,” Grey muttered, eyes closed. His skin, usually fair, had a waxy pallor, thin and splotched with red. He didn’t look strong enough to kill a glass of brandy, much less Jamie. “But if you keep prattling on, I will consider it.” More coughing, that high pitched wheezing as he gasped for breath. 

They might have dozed. At least, Jamie thought they did. It was impossible to tell if John’s rattling breaths were slowed in sleep or if he was consciously trying not to cough. Just thinking the word _cough_ sent Jamie into a fit. 

When he looked back at Grey, his eyes were open, resigned, annoyed. 

“What is it?” Jamie asked.

John sighed, sounding thoroughly annoyed through the sticky exhale. “Damn it all. I’ve got to take a piss.”

“Claire left ye a pot over ther—” Coughing. Retching, Gasping. Jamie swore under his breath. “Can ye no’ reach it if ye roll over?”

“I probably _can_ , but that’s not the bloody point.” John tugged at the irons binding them together and to the headboard. With a frustrated growl and a rather undignified whine, he shoved himself back against the pillow. “I don’t _want_ to piss lying down in a bed while I’m chained to you, it’s… well it’s unsettl—” More wretched hacking, gasping, and a pitiable moan. “Much more of that and the pot will be a moot point.” Grey let out another miserable sigh. “Can you reach the key? Claire left it on your table, did she not?”

Jamie glanced at the table to his right. The key was on the far side of it, not easily within his reach. “Aye, she did.” His left shoulder popped as he reached for the key. 

“Ow, easy,” John said, Jamie’s movements yanking his arm to an awkward angle.

He could get a fingertip on it but couldn’t get a grip on the little key. Jamie swore in German, then paused to have another coughing fit, eyes watering. Mary and Bride, it hurt like hellfire. An idea fizzled through his exhausted, soggy brain, and Jamie tipped the table toward him. It upset a cup of water, but the key slid the inch he needed to close his fingers around it. Jamie let out a triumphant “Aha!” and then coughed until he thought he’d crack a rib. 

“Well done, Fras—” More hacking and wheezing. It was getting monotonous, really.

Jamie reached over his head to the irons. It would have been much easier with his dominant left hand. But all he had free was his right, so he angled the key toward the lock through John’s manacle. He missed, twisted his hand to get a better angle, and fumbled the key toward the lock. He coughed—of fucking course—and the key dropped from his hand. It landed behind the bed with a very final _thunk_ against the floorboards. 

“You didn’t.”

“Weel…”

“ _Jamie_.” 

“Obviously I didna do it on purpose!” Jamie tried to roll over and peer behind the bed but it was hopeless. And the bedstead was too tall for him to reach the floor and feel around for the key with his right hand. “I am sorry, John. Do ye need help?”

John kicked off the quilt. “While I do appreciate the offer, I’d hate to see what would go wrong if you have another coughing fit while helping me with _this_.” As if to illustrate his point, Grey himself dissolved into a fit of hacking and sputtering. “Fuck—” _cough_ “-ing damn—” wheeze “-to fucking sh—” _hack_ “sh-it.” He struggled and flopped about, making the bed frame groan in a most unseemly manner. “Bloody shirt is twisted. Can you—shit—I can’t get my shirt out of the way.”

Jamie rolled onto his side as best as he could, wrenching his left shoulder and ending up pressed spoon-fashion against John’s back. He grabbed a handful of John’s shirt as best he could and yanked with zero effect. “Can ye raise up a wee bit?”

“Oh, certainly. Christ this is stupid.” Grey heaved himself up as much as could be expected, but it was enough for Jamie to yank John’s shirt free. He rolled toward the edge of the bed, gasped as he lost his balance, and Jamie threw his arm around Grey, holding him steady. After a brief pause, Jamie heard the sound of John’s relief. “For the record, this is _not_ my idea of an enjoyable prelude to intimacy.”

“Nor mine,” Jamie said, still holding onto John to save him from injury, if not embarrassment. “Nice aim though.”

“Ha-bloody-ha. So glad you didn’t make this unnecessarily awkward.” Grey finished and flopped back onto the bed with a groan. 

Jamie pulled the quilt back up for him and left his arm draped over John’s middle, holding him gently. They both fell silent save for the rasping sound of their breathing. 

The coughing fit struck them simultaneously. As did the wheezing. And the subsequent miserable groaning. 

John settled his one free hand over Jamie's arm. "How far did Claire say she had to go to deliver that baby?"

"Nay but a few miles." The fingers of Jamie's left hand were beginning to tingle from the prolonged elevation. He wiggled them and grimaced. "She's usually gone a day or so though."

"Christ. I can't lie here that long."

Jamie arched an eyebrow at John. "Oh aye? Do ye suppose that's why we're chained to this bed in the first place? Because Claire didna trust us to stay in it on our own?"

"That is precisely why," came Brianna's voice from the doorway. The door shut behind her, and she unwrapped her shawl from around her shoulders, hanging it on a hook by the door. Pausing at the foot of the bed, she appraised them with her hands on her hips. "Well, Mama wasn't exaggerating when she said you both looked like steamrolled shit." She let out a long sigh and shook her head, crossing to the table on Jamie’s side of the bed. “I suppose I should give your arms a break. Wait. Where’s the key? Mama said she left it here.”

Jamie grimaced. “Um.”

“ _Da_.”

“Your father dropped it behind the bed trying to escape,” John said, folding like a house of cards under Bree’s withering stare. 

The betrayal of the admission shot through Jamie like angry lightning and his mouth fell open. “Because ye asked me to!”

“I did—” violent coughing and that horrible whooping gasp cut him off.

“That’s what ye get for lying.” Jamie was on the verge of a coughing fit himself but he kept a manful grip on his composure, refusing to let it out.

“Dear God, you two,” Brianna grumbled, lowering herself to all fours so she could reach for the key under the bed. Her voice was muffled with the mattress between them. “Have you been at each other’s throats like this the whole time?”

“Essentially, yes,” Grey answered, not sounding nearly contrite enough to be the instigator in this situation, even though he most certainly _was_. Jamie kept his mouth shut though. If he opened it he would start coughing again.

Bree emerged from under the bed with the key in her hand and stood over them, staring them down with narrowed eyes, looking for all the world like her mother. “If I unlock those, do you promise to stay in bed and behave yourselves?” She arched one fiery eyebrow at them. Jamie believed she was fully prepared to leave them there if they didn’t agree to her terms.

“Yes,” Grey answered, sounding a bit desperate.

“Da?”

Jamie opened his mouth to agree and coughed into his free arm, trying to catch his breath in shallow gulps of air that wouldn’t set him off again. “Aye,” he croaked. 

Brianna gave them Claire’s death-glare again before leaning over Jamie to unlock the irons. She dropped them on the table with a clatter while the two men massaged their newly freed wrists.

“Thank ye, lass,” Jamie said. “If yer ma is so worried about us leaving the cabin, why’d she send ye in here?”

She sat down in the chair facing the bed and folded her arms across her chest. “Because I probably won’t catch your whooping cough. Everyone but me, Mama, and Roger probably will.” She spotted a book on the table and picked it up. Water dripped from the cover. “Is this your doing too, Da?” she asked, wiping the book dry on her apron and flipping open the cover to assess damage to the pages. Luckily, it was minimal.

“Weel…”

“I did ask him to,” John interjected. At last the man had found some sheepishness. “I’ll clean it up.” He threw the quilt back and started to rise.

“Nay, John, I’ll do it. I spilled the water.” Jamie swung his feet out of bed as well, seizing the opportunity to move.

“Stop,” Brianna ordered. “Sit.”

The two men stared at her, swaying and pitiable in just their shirts. It took a lot of effort for Jamie to keep his feet without grabbing onto the headboard. “Bree, I’m fine.” “Really, Brianna, my dear, it’s no trouble,” John began. 

Bree rose, hands on her hips again. “Back in that bed. Or I will put you there.”

She was nearly of a height with Jamie and towered over John. But Jamie desperately didn’t want to be stuck in that bed. He had to move, had to do _something_. It did feel good to stretch his back, even if he was winded just standing there. Besides, they could both overpower her, even if she were strong for a woman. Usually.

“Now ye listen to me, Bree—” Jamie began.

Brianna cut him off. “You’re as weak as a newborn kitten. I could knock you both flat without breaking a sweat. Don’t test me, Da.”

John spoke quietly. “Jamie, maybe we should do as she says.”

Jamie had been about to surrender, but John’s words lit some spark of obstinance within him, and as tired and—if he were being honest with himself—cantankerous as he felt, there was no way he could give in now. _Now_ it was a challenge. Narrowing his eyes at his daughter, daring her to follow through with her threat, Jamie walked away from the bed to the small collection of clean towels in a basket. He swallowed down another coughing fit, fought valiantly not to let his tiredness show, refused to gasp for breath as he picked up a towel and walked back to the spilled water.

Bree snatched the towel from his hand. “Thank you,” she said, though she didn’t sound at all grateful. She took hold of his shoulders, her grip bruising and brutal for a woman. “Back. To. Bed. Now,” she ordered and shoved him back onto the bed despite his best, yet feeble, attempt at a struggle. 

Jamie grumbled and allowed Brianna to push him back against the pillow. John had already complied and lay close enough to Jamie in the narrow bed that their sides and legs were pressed together. Grey’s lips were compressed in a grim line, likely a result of stubbornly trying not to cough.

Bree yanked the quilt back over Jamie and mopped up the water with the towel, draping it over a hook near the hearth to dry. She squinted out of the window at the late afternoon sky. “I’m going to go see about your supper.” After another of those brutal appraisals from the foot of the bed, Bree picked up the manacles and approached the sickbed with dark purpose.

“No!” John exclaimed, coughing. 

“Nay, dinna do that,” Jamie said. “We’ll stay put, aye? Just as ye said.”

Grey shot him a look as he whooped through a gasp for breath. “Christ, Fraser, at least don’t beg. Please, my dear, we’ll behave ourselves.”

Jamie rolled his eyes. “Now who’s begging?”

Bree actually laughed at them—to their faces—as she clapped the irons over their wrists, the chain looped through the headboard again. “Sit tight,” she said, wrapping her shawl around her shoulders and opening the door. “And no shenanigans, understand? I’ll be back in a jiffy.” 

And then she was gone, and the two men were alone once again, brooding in silence. John opened his mouth to break it but Jamie held up his one free index finger. “Dinna nag me, John.”

“I do _not_ nag you,” Grey replied, indignant. “But I bloody told you this was your fault, didn’t I?”


End file.
